Smart Insulin: It Knows What You’ve Been Eating

Imagine: Smart Insulin that could sense high glucose levels and automatically dispense insulin on demand. “As your glucose levels drop off, the drug stabilizes, trapping insulin until the next glucose spike.” WOW! So it knows if you’ve been bad or good and just jumps right in there to correct your BG like a healthy pancreas?!

You are kidding me, right? Weeeelll, not according to Todd Zion, founder and CEO of SmartCells, a privately held company based in Beverly, MA, that is developing such a self-regulating drug. It would be injected just once a day, using the same needles currently used for conventional insulin.

Two weeks ago, the company announced an agreement with the JDRF that includes $1 million in first-year funding to support preclinical safety and efficacy testing. “The partnership is structured to support milestone-based funding through proof-of-concept human clinical trials.” WOW.

As a reader noted in a recent email, “This sounds like the best news in diabetes in over a decade.” In longer than that, I might argue!